Music Education Research a Dozen Conventions and a Dozen JRME Volumes

It is common knowledge that the Music Educators National Conference (MENC) sponsors research presentation sessions at the national conventions in order to disseminate original research in music education. The research sessions in recent years have been in a poster presentation format, and large numbers of researchers (159 in 1990) have participated at these meetings. In contrast, only nineteen scholars reported their research (in paper reading sessions) at the 1970 conference. The remarkable growth in the number of presenters at the national conventions between 1970 and 1990 is one of several trends in music education research reported in a recent study.* Of course, the growth in the number of presenters over the dozen conventions indicates that researchers presented many more papers in 1990 than in 1970 (121 vs. 18). Another trend of interest is the movement toward co-authorship: Of the papers selected for the 1970 meeting, 5.5% had co-authors, but the figure increased to 33.9% by 1990. Women's increased participation in research becomes quite apparent when the information from the 1970 convention booklet is compared with that for 1990. For the earlier meeting, women comprised only 22.2% of the total number of presenters; this figure had changed to 43.3% by 1990. Presentations by women were in the majority at one meeting (51.7% in 1980), and the balance was fifty-fifty in 1984. Finally, no one person